Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Ball Gags and Murder

Let's talk a bit about inspiration and how I recently became an accessory to multiple murders with my inner muse.

A while ago I told my friend Kelli that I had too many open projects going on and that I wasn't going to start anything new until I started finishing the open ones I had. I felt like I kept running off on tangents and not getting anything completed. Evidently this is a common malady among writers as most of them have any odd number of text files and scribbled notes for this and that and the other.

I was going to attempt to shove a ball gag in the mouth of my muse. Tell her to shut her mouth and stop those hot little whispers in my ear for new ideas just for a little while.

Inspiration comes from all over. In the past week I've had story threads come to me from seeing a woman and her dog walking through the graveyard; a trio of some seriously fucked-up looking underground subway mutant people in a mini-mall in downtown Harrisburg; the sound of two birds arguing with each other at the end of the work day; and an old couple shuffling along the city streets and still holding each others hand as if it was life itself.

Now, that's the visual type of inspiration and that shit never stops. Unless you walk around with a pair of wrap-around Ray Bans and tap a cane in front of you when you walk, the story threads from what you see never stop unless you make a conscious effort to block them out.

The other type of inspiration is emotional...

For most writers that I know, myself included, when you're happy and in love, inspiration is a bottomless euphoric well you drink from. These are the best of times. Your head is filled... no, not just filled... it's jam-fucking-packed with ideas. It's as full as your heart feels with love, and both seem to have no origin or end. They just flow and flow and flow...

Of course, like everything dichotomous, there's also the flip side.

Sadness can also be used as fuel for the fire... I know damn well I've used it. Not so much been inspired by it, so much as took the pain and let my words fall on my pages like midnight rain.

You take it all and use it for what it is. The love, the happiness, pain, hurt, whatever. It's yours. Own it. Make it yours.

I stifled the muse instead of just accepting whatever she presented and taking it for what it was worth. It's true, not everything is worth exploring, but everything's definitely worth looking at to find out if there's more. Some stories never get off the ground and maybe deservedly so. Sometimes the timing's not right for things to come together. Sometimes it never will be and others... well, I've had things brewing for years until they finally came together and I knew it was just meant to be... that it had to have some age and experience on it for things to work at all.

But if I don't even let things have a chance... if I push them away and don't allow them even the opportunity to live, I'm guilty of killing the ideas all by myself.

So, my muse is unleashed again... I'm taking whatever happiness and pain comes my way. She's chatting up a storm here and I'm just jotting it all down, absorbing it all, and waiting for when the time is right.

***Recent Reads: Finally finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am on pause because there's some new stuff headed my way.

Current Music:Puscifer, Side project by Maynard of Tool. Wow. Fuckin Wow. Go get it.

About Me

Name:Bob Ford

Bob Ford has made several sales of short fiction, and has some screenplays floating around in the evil ether of Hollywood. When he's not trying to rip the phone free of its wall socket at his day job, he's working on a new screenplay, a novel, and a handful of short stories.